The Future Of UT3 On Linux Appears Uncertain [Archive]

phoronix

04-09-2009, 11:40 AM

Phoronix: The Future Of UT3 On Linux Appears Uncertain

While there are great open-source games like Nexuiz and XreaL, a title many Linux gamers have been waiting years for has been Unreal Tournament 3. Prior to the game launching, a Linux client was confirmed and that famed developer/porter Ryan Gordon was porting the UT3 engine. When the game launched, the Linux client was missing in action and even the Linux server build...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzE5NQ

fabioamd87

04-09-2009, 12:27 PM

I've heard about a laked version of ut3... but I haven't news about testing on it...

MaestroMaus

04-09-2009, 01:02 PM

I've heard about a laked version of ut3... but I haven't news about testing on it...

I heard Santa sometimes laughs at children...

Dragonlord

04-09-2009, 01:07 PM

I heard UT3 likes players to have SM with GameSpy ( Yes! I want to register again! Do it! )

deanjo

04-09-2009, 01:13 PM

Good old passing the buck. First 3rd party middleware was blamed, then epic, now Ryan. Svartalf your next on the list. :P Seriously, you can tell they don't give a crap about the client when you have to pass the buck just to find out what is going on. Hopefully Ryan reads that response email and comments on it.

I don't hold out much hope though seeing that they are still trying to get even a stable UT3 2.0 linux server going.

eokiahn

04-09-2009, 01:18 PM

At this point, I highly doubt we'll ever see the Linux client. I think the most important question is: when/if it's released, will anyone still care?

fabioamd87

04-09-2009, 01:23 PM

I heard Santa sometimes laughs at children...

http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/13617

bulletxt

04-09-2009, 01:36 PM

I have one thing to say: AHAHAHAHHAHAHA. Oh, and f%ck you Epic Games.

acreda

04-09-2009, 02:07 PM

MaestroMaus

04-09-2009, 03:49 PM

http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/13617

My reply still doesn't change... :)

Saist

04-09-2009, 04:47 PM

leave it Epic to promptly forget what made UT2k3 / UT2k4 a success. As a platform, Linux draws more programmer types than Windows, and many of the more successful modifications for UT2k3 / UT2k4 were produced on Linux systems. Coming from someone who hung around sites like BeyondUnreal and NaliCity on a near unhealthy basis, to my eyes it was an uncommon sight to see somebody who had produced their map / skin / mod on a Microsoft platform.

When UT3 launched, I remembered several forum threads from modders would wait for the Linux client and production tools rather than having to change up their production systems. I could be wrong, but I think Epic somehow managed to miss figuring out where their content creators were at... and from the activity of the UT3 mod scene since launch, it seems that such a viewpoint is correct. While UT3 does have several quality maps available, and several quality modifications, the number of contributers has cut off sharply, and the game was not considered a success for Midway.

One of the big stories over the past month was the re-launch of UT3 on Steam and the addition of the Titan-Gamepack, whiich turned into a successful relaunch of the product.

However... maybe not coincidentally, at the same time Steam was pumping up the UT3 relaunch, Cedega was making UT3-win playable on Linux. Now, if Cedega does their job right, tracking information obtained about a computer from a game developer or publisher should return would return a Windows compatiblity base... Only if Cedega, Wine, or Crossover screw something up will publishers suddenly get an idea of just how many people are not using Windows... exampling the sudden number of people playing City of Heroes on Windows 98 systems, and NCSoft's subsequent hiring of Transgaming for an official Mac Port.

While I don't have any hard information to state that Cedega's playability of UT3 on Linux was responsible for the turn-around in sales and subsequent re-interest in Epics game... I do think the empirical sales and community participation information that IS available indicates that Epic screwed up on their platform support.

Svartalf

04-09-2009, 07:08 PM

Svartalf your next on the list. :P

Heh... Could be worse, I suppose...

Svartalf

04-09-2009, 07:14 PM

reading in to Epic's reply, I can't help thinking that this situation will constantly hinder ports until the big game companies get skills in-house. Fresh blood is needed in the Linux gaming scene, Ryan does do good work but he is only one man and I'm pretty sure he is not thinking about living/doing this forever...

Heh... Who knows what brought this about. It's very, very much unlike Ryan to have issues this long... Part of the "fresh blood" problem is that you need to have people willing to pay you to do it, be flush with cash, or do it as a side venture (*waves hand in the air...*). Unless you can find one of those three situations and be willing to live with them- you're probably not going to want to do it.

Svartalf

04-09-2009, 07:15 PM

At this point, I highly doubt we'll ever see the Linux client. I think the most important question is: when/if it's released, will anyone still care?

Heh... Does much of anyone care right now?

Michael

04-09-2009, 07:25 PM

Heh... Does much of anyone care right now?

I do.... For benchmarking :D

deanjo

04-09-2009, 07:40 PM

Heh... Who knows what brought this about. It's very, very much unlike Ryan to have issues this long... Part of the "fresh blood" problem is that you need to have people willing to pay you to do it, be flush with cash, or do it as a side venture (*waves hand in the air...*). Unless you can find one of those three situations and be willing to live with them- you're probably not going to want to do it.

I'm really starting to think that possibly an arrangement was made with Ryan, so much up front during development and the rest upon completion with Epic deciding after the poor sales it wasn't worthwhile for them to pay Ryan for completion of the job, thus no release of the client and their current struggles trying to update the server to 2.0.

Saist

04-09-2009, 07:55 PM

Heh... Does much of anyone care right now?

I do. UT3 was a blast to play. It just wasn't enough of a blast to justify logging into Windows.

Remco

04-09-2009, 08:41 PM

I don't care anymore. I won't buy it if it comes out. Just let it die.

Svartalf

04-09-2009, 10:49 PM

I do.... For benchmarking :D

Heh... About like Rage will be for "benchmarking", right? ;)

Max Spain

04-10-2009, 12:30 AM

I heard UT3 likes players to have SM with GameSpy ( Yes! I want to register again! Do it! )

I was at a LAN some time ago when Steam had the free UT3 weekend. We all got the 8GB download and installed. The guy who had it done first tried it out and it worked. When he went to use it a second time he discovered that UT3 had discarded all of his settings because he did not log in with GameSpy. Even though it was free NOBODY played it. That's just sad :(

leilei

04-10-2009, 12:49 AM

That issue also occured in the demo version also, and what's worse is that you're just "Player" when you're in offline mode. Not good for private home LANs.

UT3 was potential, Midway just dropped the ball on handling a FPS game as if like an expendable addition to a tired fighting game series.

Fixxer_Linux

04-10-2009, 05:07 AM

Epic is incredible : they are contracting someone (Icculus I guess) to port their closed source game to Mac and Linux and they don't even know where the things are ?

It's not the way I'm used to follow my contractants in my job. I guess that way my boss wouldn't appreciate it.
Could you imagine this scenario :
- Hey, were are we with that project we've paid for ?
- I don't know
- Well... Could you do something to know ?
- ... not really. I can't reach him, I don't know where he is... And to be honnest, I don't really care.
- Ok, do you see that door over there ?

Seriously.
I guess the next step in UT3 linux/mac client will be to say : "the financial crysis urge us to stop any further development for the port. Too much expensive, too few potential clients, we stop everything. Call the banks and the traders responsible for the world crysis and fµck them all".
I bet a cookie (a real cookie, not a firefox cookie ;) ) that the crysis is the perfect story for ending that mess from Epic/Midway.

Svartalf

04-10-2009, 11:17 AM

Epic is incredible : they are contracting someone (Icculus I guess) to port their closed source game to Mac and Linux and they don't even know where the things are ?

It'd be icculus. Epic's doing the shifting the blame game. I wonder how Ryan feels about them throwing him under the bus like this...

It's not the way I'm used to follow my contractants in my job. I guess that way my boss wouldn't appreciate it.
Could you imagine this scenario :
- Hey, were are we with that project we've paid for ?
- I don't know
- Well... Could you do something to know ?
- ... not really. I can't reach him, I don't know where he is... And to be honnest, I don't really care.
- Ok, do you see that door over there ?

There's a reason they "don't know". I think deanjo hit it on the head of the nail here. There was a delay because of a bit of timed exclusivity coupled with a delay due to middleware issues. From there they didn't have good sales figures on the stuff they DID have versions for. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect the dots from there. Ryan's definitely NOT like this. There's a reason that the game industry goes to him for MacOS and Linux stuff- he typically delivers on schedule and while "expensive" for a single person, he's cheaper than getting your team to do it unless they have the same skillsets he does.

Seriously.
I guess the next step in UT3 linux/mac client will be to say : "the financial crysis urge us to stop any further development for the port. Too much expensive, too few potential clients, we stop everything. Call the banks and the traders responsible for the world crysis and fµck them all".
I bet a cookie (a real cookie, not a firefox cookie ;) ) that the crysis is the perfect story for ending that mess from Epic/Midway.

Heh... I'd almost bet a bottle of Edradour 22Yr Port Barrel aged that something like this will be what comes of it all- if they ever get honest about it all and tell us the real reasons for this instead of these finger pointing games that they're doing here and have been for the last year and a half plus now.

Dragonlord

04-10-2009, 11:25 AM

Nah, would not bet on it. That's the Japense Syndrom: Never loose your face! It's not like this induststries would _not_ live from back stabbing and finger pointing ( see DRM, pirating, 2nd hand, and so forth ). Just one more island of turd in the see of mud.

deanjo

04-10-2009, 11:46 AM

I think deanjo hit it on the head of the nail here.

Heh, only extrapolating a potential reason, I've got one project that is in the same boat as the scenario I presented. Until final payment is made it sits on my HD undelivered.

Svartalf

04-10-2009, 12:00 PM

Heh, only extrapolating a potential reason, I've got one project that is in the same boat as the scenario I presented. Until final payment is made it sits on my HD undelivered.

Heh... I think everyone doing contract work happens to have that sort of thing- I know I do too. (There's a high-speed, flat path check scanner that's one of the better in the industry with Linux drivers sitting on my HD on my server because the guy couldn't be bothered to pay me $1k on what should have cost him something on the order of 20K of custom dev work...) Given that this is the case and he's doing other things as if nothing had happened, including other paying projects, I suspect the WAG is less one than we'd like for it to be. :D

Svartalf

04-10-2009, 12:01 PM

xav1r

04-11-2009, 05:19 PM

So has Epic paid Ryan to sort of keep "stalling" everyone regarding development on UT3 for linux intentionally, but not tell them that development has been halted for good? I dont understand.

deanjo

04-11-2009, 06:18 PM

So has Epic paid Ryan to sort of keep "stalling" everyone regarding development on UT3 for linux intentionally, but not tell them that development has been halted for good? I dont understand.

No we are saying that Epic is probably not making final payment to Ryan after seeing UT3 flop because they see little chance of returns. No pay, no port. It's common in contract coding for the developer who is doing the port to get a retainer and then get full payment upon completion. If Epic doesn't pay for the completion then there is fat chance you will ever see the port. As Svartalf said it is extremely unusual for Ryan to drag his heels in doing a port.

xav1r

04-11-2009, 06:38 PM

No we are saying that Epic is probably not making final payment to Ryan after seeing UT3 flop because they see little chance of returns. No pay, no port. It's common in contract coding for the developer who is doing the port to get a retainer and then get full payment upon completion. If Epic doesn't pay for the completion then there is fat chance you will ever see the port. As Svartalf said it is extremely unusual for Ryan to drag his heels in doing a port.

Ah, but then why if Ryan isnt getting paid what he was promised by epic, effectively getting screwed by epic, why isnt he just suing them, or publicly annoucing that this linux client is done for good, unless he is paid? NDA keeps him on a leash? If i wasnt getting paid what i was promised in a contract, i would say screw the NDA, or is he somehow loyal to Epic?

niniendowarrior

04-13-2009, 02:13 AM

In my experience, that is never a good thing to do. If the company wrongs you, deal with that but always keep your end. It's better to make it more difficult for them to lay a finger on you.

Not sure what's up with Ryan and Epic but I'm not going to leap on unpaid bills being a source of the delay. But, I know that some developers do that until they are paid in full.

To be frank, I think it's a complicated mess filled with contact this for that, and when they do that it goes to another guy. Likely the mess goes to the point that Epic hasn't bothered to follow up somebody and Ryan is stuck somewhere.

Svartalf

04-13-2009, 06:11 PM

Ah, but then why if Ryan isnt getting paid what he was promised by epic, effectively getting screwed by epic, why isnt he just suing them, or publicly annoucing that this linux client is done for good, unless he is paid? NDA keeps him on a leash? If i wasnt getting paid what i was promised in a contract, i would say screw the NDA, or is he somehow loyal to Epic?

The moment you go and do that is the moment the contracts typically dry up. Unless you're retiring, you probably don't want to play that card unless you absoposilutely need to.

Svartalf

04-13-2009, 06:20 PM

Not sure what's up with Ryan and Epic but I'm not going to leap on unpaid bills being a source of the delay. But, I know that some developers do that until they are paid in full.

Considering the level of skillset Ryan has, I doubt that he's stuck on something. There's something up and it's NOT something coding-wise that's doing it. Ryan's pretty damn good at fixing that sort of thing. In fact, he's better than most of the other people doing it right at the moment.

Over a year and a half delay is NOT due to being "stuck" on something in the code. It's a legal or financial hang on things. Moreover, if it was him, he'd not be bound by NDA and he'd have probably owned up to it at this point in time.

niniendowarrior

04-13-2009, 06:54 PM

Considering the level of skillset Ryan has, I doubt that he's stuck on something. There's something up and it's NOT something coding-wise that's doing it. Ryan's pretty damn good at fixing that sort of thing. In fact, he's better than most of the other people doing it right at the moment.

Over a year and a half delay is NOT due to being "stuck" on something in the code. It's a legal or financial hang on things. Moreover, if it was him, he'd not be bound by NDA and he'd have probably owned up to it at this point in time.

I find skillset very unlikely to be the cause too. But I also doubt it's financial. Whatever it is, I think it's likely to be some legal quagmire involving multiple companies that has paralyzed the entire development.

Dragonlord

04-13-2009, 07:03 PM

Didn't Epic churn out some time ago that things stalled due to "middleware" higgledy-piggledy ( hey I learned a new cool word :P )? I don't want to poke fingers into general directions but since GameSpy is part of the show... :rolleyes:

Svartalf

04-14-2009, 12:18 AM

leilei

04-14-2009, 06:06 AM

actually i think it'd be speedtree

psycho_driver

04-14-2009, 07:11 AM

actually i think it'd be speedtree

You may be onto something. The two screenshots that have been released have no foliage outside of the houseplant in the window and vines on the side of the building which are most likely just part of the building's wall texture.

WhiteDwarf

04-14-2009, 09:49 AM

actually i think it'd be speedtree

SpeedTree on linux is not a problem (Savage 2 uses it).

Svartalf

04-14-2009, 10:45 AM

actually i think it'd be speedtree

And why would you think this? As someone pointed out, Savage 2 uses it- and it's out. :D

Do you happen to have some basis for your remark or are you just grasping at straws?

leilei

04-15-2009, 12:58 AM

Savage2's lucky to be released on Linux at this point. I think Savage2 used SpeedTreeCAD to manually create trees for the media, whatever UT3 uses is SpeedtreeRT itself to build and render the trees on load.

Of course, this post is absolute bullcrap guessing, then again it's all speculation so feel free to yank each sentence one by one with a quotebox for each and stare me down with it.

But still, the very idea of silly middleware holding a release hostage from people wanting to play it is very evil.

xav1r

04-15-2009, 01:11 AM

Maybe its the trademarked facial animation used by the characters what's keeping the linux client from being released. ;)

MaestroMaus

04-15-2009, 04:55 AM

I still think it was Santa, until proven otherwise...

Dragonlord

04-15-2009, 10:06 AM

Maybe its the trademarked facial animation used by the characters what's keeping the linux client from being released. ;)
It's not like those animations would have been good after all. I've seen better elsewhere. That said it's inhouse stuff as far as I know so that would be no problem. If it would be outhouse stuff it's a different topic so I'm still betting on GameSpy problems since this brute sits deep in the system and you can't really play that game unless you log in.

( I just love how TNM treats GameSpy... Spot... On! :D )

Svartalf

04-15-2009, 11:31 PM

Savage2's lucky to be released on Linux at this point. I think Savage2 used SpeedTreeCAD to manually create trees for the media, whatever UT3 uses is SpeedtreeRT itself to build and render the trees on load.

I ask again : Do you have any valid grounds for your remarks?

Of course, this post is absolute bullcrap guessing, then again it's all speculation so feel free to yank each sentence one by one with a quotebox for each and stare me down with it.

More than happy to oblige there. ;)

You see, you're facing off with people that work in the game development industry. We're a bit more familiar with the libraries in question. GameSpy's crap. I've dealt with the people in the past. They don't think very much at all of Linux in general- and they try not to let people use their stuff under Linux. Moreover, it's a pain in the backside. It wouldn't at all surprise me if this wasn't a piece of the puzzle.

If you don't have something along those lines, I suggest letting the subject drop on that one. No need to grasp at straws without some basis for the WAG being made. :D

But still, the very idea of silly middleware holding a release hostage from people wanting to play it is very evil.

No kidding. I think you'll find me agreeing with that one.

Svartalf

04-15-2009, 11:32 PM

If it would be outhouse stuff it's a different topic

GameSpy's pretty "outhouse" if you ask me... :D

jonwil

04-16-2009, 12:59 AM

Given how CRAP GameSpy is and how so many people seem to hate it (including developers it would seem) why hasn't someone come up with a 100% cross platform (i.e. Linux, Mac, Windows, XBOX 360, PS3 etc) replacement for it that isn't crap? And then start pushing it for newer titles?

leilei

04-16-2009, 08:35 AM

I don't think Gamespy held Quake4 or ETQW back.

(Iirc etqw used it for accounts but of course as alaways I could be wrong)

Dragonlord

04-16-2009, 09:08 AM

@jonwil:
Why use such a crap in the first place? It's not like GameSpy would give the player anything important except a hot iron shoved into the backside. There's no replacement because it's useless crap. Unfortunately some developers didn't realize that yet.

@leilei:
Chances are it's because in Q4 it's not required to play except for multiplayer. Now I don't know how much this is true since I only tested Q4 for a short time ( Linux binary sucks major balls... sound troubles make your ears bleed ) but for playing the game single player no GameSpy is mandatory. So it might be very well that if GS is obligatory for the game to run that they can shot it caught in bed making love to Linux but if optional it might slip under the radar.

Svartalf

04-16-2009, 12:15 PM

I don't think Gamespy held Quake4 or ETQW back.

(Iirc etqw used it for accounts but of course as alaways I could be wrong)

Ever considered licensing costs? Each target costs you money on licensing in many of the middleware cases. Ever considered use-cases? It's use may be different on those titles and may have a different licensing deal.

There's a flat fee and sometimes a per-unit royalty involved with it's use- and it's a per-platform cost on at least the flat fee. If you're wondering why we don't see more Linux versions of the commercial stuff is partly because of this. Ever wondered why NWN didn't have the cutscenes and we had to hack them in ourselves? That's because BioWare didn't want to spend the additional $5-10k it would have cost them in licensing to RAD for Miles and Bink combined.

I'm not saying it is the cause. As you point out, it didn't hold up those other games. But, in the same breath, SpeedTree didn't cause issues with Savage2 either- so if you're going to invalidate the call of several people on GameSpy on that grounds, you can't use that one for your call on what's the hold up because it doesn't apply any better than GameSpy does at that point. :D